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Thursday, January 4, 2018

Three Options for Hosting Snow Day Study Sessions

Batten down the hatches! We've got a big storm about to hit the northeastern part of the United States. When I went to bed last night many schools were already announcing closings for today and when I got up at 4am even more had closed. Then when I went on Twitter someone asked me for advice about remote tutoring/ test review on a snow day. The actual message was, "got any ideas of how to remotely tutor/test review with students (multiple at once) during a snow day? I've got a tablet PC and we're a Google apps district." It turns out that I do have some ideas about this.

1. If your school district allows it/ has enabled it, you could use Google Hangouts. Pro tip: there is often a few people who can't join/ have trouble joining due to being signed into multiple Google Accounts at the same time.

2. Webroom.net is a free and simple service for hosting online study sessions. In the following video I demonstrate how quick and easy it is to create a virtual conference room on WebRoom.

3. Know Lounge that will let you create a live broadcast from your laptop. Know Lounge includes a whiteboard that you can draw on and share with your audience. Students can ask you question by writing them into a chat box. Additionally, you can allow students to use their webcams to ask you questions during your broadcast. Directions for using Know Lounge can be watched here.